Culture Wars and Enduring American Dilemmas

Irene Taviss Thomson

Publication Year: 2010

Irene Taviss Thomson gives us a nuanced portrait of American social politics that helps explain both why we are drawn to the idea of a 'culture war' and why that misrepresents what is actually going on. ---Rhys H. Williams, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, Loyola University Chicago "An important work showing---beneath surface conflict---a deep consensus on a number of ideals by social elites." ---John H. Evans, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego The idea of a culture war, or wars, has existed in America since the 1960s---an underlying ideological schism in our country that is responsible for the polarizing debates on everything from the separation of church and state, to abortion, to gay marriage, to affirmative action. Irene Taviss Thomson explores this notion by analyzing hundreds of articles addressing hot-button issues over two decades from four magazines: National Review, Time, The New Republic, and The Nation, as well as a wide array of other writings and statements from a substantial number of public intellectuals. What Thomson finds might surprise you: based on her research, there is no single cultural divide or cultural source that can account for the positions that have been adopted. While issues such as religion, homosexuality, sexual conduct, and abortion have figured prominently in public discussion, in fact there is no single thread that unifies responses to each of these cultural dilemmas for any of the writers. Irene Taviss Thomson is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, having taught in the Department of Social Sciences and History at Fairleigh Dickinson University for more than 30 years. Previously, she taught in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University.

Cover

Title page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

1. Culture Wars and Warring about Culture

American culture appears to be deeply divided: those who believe there are
absolute moral truths contend with those who place moral authority in individual
judgment. Armed with these competing visions, "orthodox" versus
"progressive" culture warriors clash on issues of abortion, homosexuality...

2. Respect for Religion but Uncertainty about Its Role

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he observed
that the American case belied the eighteenth-century philosophers'
assumption that religious faith would decline in the face of broader freedom
and knowledge: "In America, one of the freest and most enlightened...

3. Moral but Not Moralistic

Observers since the time of Tocqueville have noted Americans' propensity
to "see the world in moral terms" (Robin M. Williams 1957, 397). The dominant
Protestant denominations have called on people to follow their consciences,
and even agnostic and atheistic reformers have tended to be
"utopian moralists who believe in the perfectibility of man and...

4. Individualism but Not to Excess

In the American cultural lexicon, individualism is always good. When it is
"excessive," however, it becomes "selfishness," which is not good. Contrary
to culture war stereotypes of individual licentiousness being advocated
on the progressive side and deference to larger purposes on the orthodox
side, elite opinion on both sides of the cultural...

5. Pluralism within One Culture

The debate about multiculturalism had a precursor in the much less contentious
discussion of cultural pluralism beginning in the 1910s. In the
early decades of the twentieth century, assimilation or Americanization
was so much the dominant idea that cultural pluralism hardly received notice. While Horace Kallen claims to have...

6. Antielitist but Respecting Achievement

One staple of American political discourse is defining one's opponents as
elitist while portraying one's own side as reflecting the will of the people.
All sides in the culture wars manifest this tendency. What is unusual here
is only the number of elites at issue, since every sphere of culture wars contention is characterized by splits between the leadership...

7. Moderation, Plain and Simple

Unlike the other American cultural themes that occupy the culture warriors,
moderation is seen as an uncomplicated good. The American admiration
for it contains no ambivalences or ambiguities. In his 1979 study of
American journalism, Herbert Gans suggested that "moderatism" or distaste
for "excess or extremism" was among...

8. Culture, Class, and American Exceptionalism

While this volume argues that there is no culture war, just newer iterations
of long-standing American cultural dilemmas, the rhetoric and the social
movements associated with the "culture wars" raise questions about the
nature of the divisions within contemporary American society. Why is a
culture war perceived to...

9. Concluding Comments

Defenders of the culture war idea contend that despite the moderation embraced by the American population, the "deep culture" that frames our understanding of social reality is divided into orthodox and progressive camps. This public culture, enunciated by elites, must be studied separately from public opinion. Examination...

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